from our friend CJ Hart of Forcey:
"Please join us for an evening of sharing by Pastor Michael Sprague on the Katrina relief ministry of Trinity Church in Covington, LA. Many members of our Forcey family have served the New Orleans’ community through this ministry. Michael will be at Forcey on Tuesday, September 18th at 7:00 PM in the sanctuary to give an update of God’s amazing work in Louisiana. For questions, contact Chris Hart at (301)332-6994 or cjhart@aol.com."
We're back. I was deep in the woods of
I do not believe the magnitude of this disaster hit me until Hurricane Rita moved in to kick
My father’s actions and Pastor Michael Sprague’s words answered my questions—God mobilizes His body of believers. Seven weeks after the storm, my dad flew to
My father’s heart inspired me to not just feel sorry for these people, but also to want to act to help them. This trip, January 14-20, 2007 was the first chance my school schedule would allow me to come down. My father returned with me.
I was bombarded with a tidal wave of unexpected criticism. Students from my college in
Wrong. That saying is actually a Puritan proverb; it is not quoted anywhere in the Bible. I vehemently argued with them, and this only fueled my fire to help.
As we descended into
We drove through the French quarter next. I ignored the obvious symbols of immorality—signs for gentlemen’s clubs, etc. and I admired the classic European architecture. I looked down to write in my notebook for a moment, and when I looked up again, we were in the upper ninth ward. The contrast between this and the French quarter was like night and day. The homes looked as if someone had picked them up and run them through a shredder. FEMA “x”-es, marking the dates inspected and number of dead found within the structure, were plain to the eye on what was left of a front wall. Lucky houses had a zero for a bottom number; I saw one that said six. This is when I broke down and began to cry.
On our first day of visiting homeowners affected by Katrina, I met a beautifully selfless and loving eighty-four year old woman. She owned her home herself, paid off her mortgage years before, and as she could not afford insurance, she was not required to have any. She had applied to the Louisiana Road Home federal grant program. Because she did not pay for homeowner’s insurance, they were going to grant her thirty percent less money to recover from the disaster. Had she been rich enough to afford insurance, she would have been granted more money. But because she was poor, she was reimbursed even less. Later that night I learned that in two months, this very grant program had given to eighteen out of about seventy thousand applicants and used about six hundred thousand dollars out of eight and a half billion.
This put me over the edge. Being a passionate writer, I started organizing an essay in my head and thinking of the nastiest polite language I could use to tell off our government. Then I thought, what can one lone person do? Our government is so huge, they will not even notice me, let alone listen to me. That is when God popped the mission into my head—give your time and effort. If the government will not help these people as they need, why can you not?
Even after all the debris is cleared away and the people have returned to their homes, there is a much more lasting damage affecting them. That damage is the scars the storm left on their hearts, and that is what I am after. I want God to use me, to be His hands and His feet reaching out to His children to show them His unfailing love. And that is why I am here.
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